AI is eating the world

Terry Boyd’s takeaways from our recent event on “How Will Generative AI Impact Your Business?” You can watch a recap of the event here.

The event at High Tech Campus Eindhoven had us thinking about Marc Andreessen’s quote that “Software is eating the world.” True, but it’s AI software that everyone has been talking about for the past few weeks. So, this event was well timed for maximum interest, filling the HTCE Conference Center auditorium with more than 250 attendees.

Paul van Son, innovation manager at the AI Innovation Center on Campus, opened with a blunt prediction – “Generative AI will bring AI into everyone’s lives,” with a massive impact on everything we do.

Three presentations from three competitors, ranging from global giant Microsoft to Resleeve, a startup based in the AI Innovation Center, echoed that prediction. All three agreed that, with Generative AI, we’ve reached an epochal moment, not just for tech, but for society.

A new AI Age when everyone can convert natural language and text to code, instantly create new fashions and make customer experiences seamless.

The three presentations addressed:

• Customer service

• Software development

• Product design

Santa Clara, Calif.-based ServiceNow Vice President Heath Ramsey gave the talk on customer service, starting by saying, “Having been in the industry for over 25 years, generative AI to me is probably the biggest transformational event in enterprise software in my entire career.”

ServiceNow’s workflow automation software is one of the most widely used platforms in the world, with the company’s shares recently trading for more than $435 per share on the New York Stock Exchange.

AI will increasingly efficiently organize data across verticals, resulting in what Ramsey called the “summarization” of information, making workers at all levels more efficient and optimizing the customer experience. AI will allow even the employees on the lowest levels of the org chart to do more advanced work in coordination with the rest of the team.

Microsoft’s presentation on software development by Maurice Jutte and Hicham Zmarrou was very technical but pointed out there are lots of AI models. Using the most advanced doesn’t always make sense since it uses the most power and memory. Zmarrou demonstrated Microsoft Azure’s most sophisticated features such as instantly translating code from one programming language to another – from Java Script to Python, for example.

We found the most compelling to be the talk on product design by Rogier Warnawa, founder of Resleeve, on product design. Warnawa demonstrated how his four-year-old startup can take, for example, Gucci bags and use AI to create new designs that still adhere to the Gucci design approach, fitting seamlessly into the product line.

“Designers take days. Resleeve takes seconds. It really made me ask, ‘What is creativity?” Warnawa said.